La Locandiera (Mirandolina, the Hostess at the Inn)

Synopsis

Classic comedy, live music and fine dining as Wonderland's La Locandiera turns restaurants across Ireland into 18th century Florentine Inns. The seductive innkeeper Mirandolina has every man at her feet they cover her in diamonds and cower about her like puppy dogs. Until 'the declared enemy of Italian women' - the Ulster Gentleman checks in. Piqued, Mirandolina vows to vindicate her sex by making him fall in love with her. Who will lose the night? The misogynist Gentleman or the seducing Locandiera? La Locandiera is one of Italy's most celebrated comedies. Wonderland's sparkling period production includes a delicious dinner, accompanied with a generous helping of live Neapolitan arias and folk songs from Mirandolina and her admirers. All tickets include a scrumptious Italian dinner.

Our Review:

15 August 2010

Reviewing La Locandeira, a traditional eighteenth century Florentine dining experience, one feels as much a food critic as a theatre pundit. I’ll start with the food: it’s fine. Not top class, which is thrown into contrast by continual references by the cast (who inhabit the same restaurant) to how brilliant the innkeeper’s cooking is. The risotto is recommended.

Goldoni’s comedy is very much of its time, a comedy of sex, money and class in which a beautiful hostess draws her clientele into a rapidly unravelling love pentangle. The performances are solid, barring a few wobbling faux-Italian accents; and [Damien O’Donnell] gives a noteworthy comic turn.

The dinner theatre construct serves them: the over-the-top, contrived action would have dragged more without the diversion of dinner. But ultimately the production fails to provide either a consuming immersive experience or a fully realised drama, lodged somewhere between in a ...

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